Introduction:

The media and academic dialogue surrounding high-stakes decisionmaking by robotics applications has been dominated by a focus on morality. But the tendency to do so while overlooking the role that legal incentives play in shaping the behavior of profit-maximizing firms risks marginalizing the field of robotics and rendering many of the deepest challenges facing today’s engineers utterly intractable. This Essay...

Introduction:

In this essay, Professors Dana and Tuerkheimer conceptualize Flint as an archetypical case of underenforcement—that is, a denial of the equal protection of laws guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Viewed as such, the inadequacy of environmental regulation can be understood as a failure that extends beyond the confines of Flint; a failure that demands a far more expansive duty to protect vulnerable populations.

Introduction:

In this essay, Professor Kagan asserts that recent disputes in Ohio and Nevada about whether lawyers should be allowed to wear “Black Lives Matter” pins in open court expose a fault line in First Amendment law. Lower courts have generally been unsympathetic to lawyers who display political symbols in court. But, Kagan argues, it would go too far suggest that free speech has no relevance in courtrooms. This essay argues for a way to strike a balance.

Introduction:

In this essay, Professor Morley explains that states generally conduct their elections in a “unitary” manner, applying many of the same rules, requirements, and procedures to races for offices at all levels of government. Morley argues that the unitary status of American elections has evolved into a convention: a principle that people expect to limit government officials’ discretion, despite not...

Submissions from 2016
2016

Introduction:

In this essay, Anderson explores how the police narrative is told in appellate opinions, in light of changing police stories seen in the media. In recent years, video recordings of police violence have upended the traditional narrative of police heroism. The videos have led to discussions of police accountability, yet the controversies surrounding these incidents have also served to highlight...

Introduction:

Fear of persecution based on one’s family ties has long been considered a basis for asylum in the United States. Recently, however, the scope of that protection has come under dispute and, as a result, may be expanding. In this Essay, Blake argues for a more expansive interpretation of these asylum claims, recognizing family-based persecution even when persecutors have multiple motives for targeting their victim.

Introduction:

In this essay, Blocher considers recent developments that have given new hope to those seeking constitutional abolition of the death penalty. Some supporters of the death penalty continue to argue, as they have since Furman v. Georgia, that the death penalty is constitutional because the Fifth Amendment explicitly contemplates it. The appeal of this argument is obvious, but Blocher argues...

Introduction:

In this essay, Ford considers provisions of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which place restrictions on the disposition of detainees held in Guantánamo Bay. These provisions raise substantial separation of powers issues regarding the ability of Congress to restrict detention operations of the Executive. These restrictions, and similar restrictions found in earlier NDAAs, specifically implicate the Executive's powers...

Introduction:

In this essay, Koppelman reviews Secular Government, Religious People by Ira C. Lupu and Robert W. Tuttle. Lupu and Tuttle offer a timely examination of how and where religious liberty and American law intersect. Koppelman offers his take and places the book within the scholarship on religious liberty.

Introduction:

In this essay, Litman and Rahman argue that if the Supreme Court grants habeas relief in this month’s Beckles v. United States, then it should spell out certain details about where a Beckles claim comes from and who such a claim benefits. Those details are not essential to the main question raised in the case, but the federal habeas statute...

Submissions from 2015
2015

Introduction:

Two decades ago, the Supreme Court sought to promote more effective, transparent patent litigation in Markman v. Westview Instruments by ruling that “the construction of a patent, including terms of art within its claim, is exclusively within the province of the court.” In so doing, the Court removed interpretation of patent claims from the black box of jury deliberations by...

Introduction:

In the essay, Professor Bedi discusses a prominent issue in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: whether an individual's cell phone location data is constitutionally protected. The emergence of this data and law enforcement's attempts to utilize it have raised new questions about the reach of the third-party and public disclosure doctrines, which have traditionally rendered the Fourth Amendment inapplicable to seemingly similar...

Introduction:

In the essay, Dubrowski analyzes Ferguson v. JONAH, a landmark 2015 decision in which a New Jersey court held --- for the first time --- that homosexuality is not a disease or mental disorder as a matter of law. Based on this pretrial ruling, a civil jury unanimously found JONAH (a conversion therapy clinic) its co-directors and its chief counselor...

Introduction:

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the federal courts have heard arguments in contract disputes involving billions of dollars worth of securitized financial products—yet it is not clear that the federal courts have subject matter jurisdiction over these cases. In this Essay, we advance possible explanations for why parties to default disputes do not raise this possible jurisdictional defect.

Introduction:

In the review, Kovvali discusses and critiques certain philosophical underpinnings of "nudges." Nudges are small interventions that change the context in which decisions are made, thus encouraging individuals to make specific choices. Using an analogy to voting paradoxes, Kovvali shows that nudges exploit a type of irrationality that results when citizens attempt to reconcile inconsistent objectives, and concludes that while...

Introduction:

In the essay, Mr. Pierce discusses what, exactly, the government must prove before it can, consistent with the First Amendment, prosecute someone who posts threatening messages on Facebook. Last Term, a divided Court wrestled with this issue in Elonis v. United States, reversing the defendant's conviction but leaving an important question unanswered: does the government need to prove that a...

Introduction:

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that prohibitions on same-sex marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment. In hindsight, the decision seems inevitable, the culmination of a precisely two-year race towards marriage equality that began with the Court’s 2013 invalidation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act on June 26, 2013. Federal...

Introduction:

In this essay, Professor Wilson reflects on the manner in which the law treats adolescents who are faced with end-of-life decisions. She begins by surveying the legal framework underlying end-of-life choices at the state and federal levels. She then discusses two decisionmakers - adolescents and adults - and the behavioral traits and biases that animate each when end-of-life decisions arise....

Submissions from 2011
2011

Introduction:

The Tea Party movement and its constitutional vision for the United States is perhaps the hottest topic in American public law today. The rising tide of popular support for the Tea Party movement has transformed what was once cast aside as a fleeting faction into a formidable force in American politics—one that could augur significant consequences for the contours of American constitutional law in the years ahead.

Introduction:

The American criminal justice system is often envisioned as one in which public prosecutors pursue public prosecutions on behalf of the public—leaving no room for crime victims’ involvement. However, state and federal statutes and state constitutional amendments have challenged this vision. Perhaps the best example of such a challenge comes from the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (“CVRA”), a federal statute passed by Congress in 2004 that guarantees victims a series of rights in federal criminal proceedings.

Introduction:

In a recent article Professors Lawrence Rosenthal and Joyce Lee Malcolm provided an intriguing debate over the standard of scrutiny that should be applied to restrictions on the Second Amendment in the wake of McDonald v. City of Chicago. This Article sets forth to illuminate two aspects of that debate. The first is Professor Rosenthal’s concern on the constitutionality of...

Introduction:

The sudden emergence and prominence of the Tea Party movement raises important questions about the role of the Constitution in popular politics. More than any political movement in recent memory, the Tea Party movement is centrally focused on the meaning of the Constitution. Tea Party supporters believe that the nation is facing a crisis because it has abandoned the Constitution, and they seek to restore the government to what they believe are its foundational principles.